


Working Wonders

by Acciofirewhiskey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 50 First Hamburger Dates, F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acciofirewhiskey/pseuds/Acciofirewhiskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>50 First Hamburger Dates Entry, December 10th: Landlord problems take Gold away from their date, on a snowy Storybrook evening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working Wonders

It’s just begun to snow, as he enters Granny’s, and Gold thinks to himself that he need remember to check with Belle, make sure she has proper footwear for the inclement weather.

She’s beaten him to the diner, he sees, as he hangs up his coat, shaking off a few flakes. Belle faces away from him, reading, and when he approaches, she doesn’t hear the sound of his cane—too absorbed in whatever tale she’s brought, he assumes. He leans in close, for most would find the proximity of pawnbroker Mr. Gold intimidating, and whispers low in her ear, hoping to startled her (but only teasingly), “And what has you so enraptured, I wonder?”

Belle jumps slightly, and then giggles. She looks up, beaming at him, “Hello!” She stretches to give him a quick peck on the lips, and it’s suddenly Gold’s turn to be taken by surprise. “It’s Anna Karenina,” she tells him, as he tries to find his wits (when scared by him, most the town would run, but instead she kisses him. Wonders never ceased). She closes the book, placing a strip of fabric in her place, as a bookmark, and pats his side of the table.

She means for him to sit, he realizes.

He does so, as if he were a puppy led on a leash, and perhaps that’s exactly what he is, these days, a dog at her heel (he wouldn’t have it any other way).

Clearing his throat, still dazed from the kiss, he says the first thing to come to mind, “It’s Kar— _Eh_ —nihnah,” he corrects her for she’d pronounced it with an emphasis on the last two syllables, as in the English, female name.

“Kar— _Eh—_ nina,” she repeats slowly, nodding, and briefly he wonders if the correction was rude, but imagines his Belle would not wish to continue in error—she’s lady of learning, after all, a lover of books. In the castle too, she’d always desired to be a student, not out of a craving for power or the dark arts, as he’d first thought, but knowledge simply for knowledge’s sake.

“It’s Russian,” he adds, as if that makes it any less impolite of him, “like the mountain folk in our old world.”

“Ah,” Belle says, nodding again, filing the new information in the library of her mind. Her smile reassures him that she still seeks knowledge, that she welcomes it even from him, the Dark One, the town’s villain. “I already ordered. Figured you wouldn’t mind, considering…”

“Considering these things have tended toward disaster?” he asks, referring to their previous attempts.

She laughs, swatting him lightly on the arm, “Don’t seem to get to the hamburger part, was what I was going to say.” He laughs along with her, and not in an entirely smug manner, either.   

As they wait for their food, she tells him of her novel and further renovations to her library. He listens, and truly he could hardly deny it as much as chop off his own arm, enraptured.

“… And, Rumple, you’ll never guess what I found in one of the boxes from storage yesterday!”

“What?” he asks, smirking (though anything that’s got her that excited, he does wonder at its source).

“The book you quoted,  _Pleasures of Life_. I’m going to read it after I finish this one, and—“

“—And the twenty other some you’ve committed yourself to, m’dear?” he jokes.

She laughs, “Perhaps.” Belle opens her mouth to continue, but Ruby arrives with their orders. “Two burgers, one with extra pickles,” the waitress asks, eyebrows raised in question.

“Mine, dearie—“ Gold answers, but at that moment, his cellular rings.

“Answer. I don’t mind,” Belle tells him, graciously.

He’d rather not, but once again, he’s hard pressed to ever disobey her. He takes a look at the caller identification and grinds his teeth: Mother Superior. He turns to Belle, who sits, chatting amicably with the wolf, and just as he plans to ignore the blasted telephone call, he remembers a few days back, and how his love might react to his decision. He’s learnt his lesson, so he answers, growling, “ _What_?”

At his tone, Belle turns her attention back to him, and Gold attempts to train himself into something akin to civility. He sighs, as he listens to the insufferable woman’s blathering. “Have you tried the breaker?” he asks, at the first pause.

At the Blue Fairy’s reply, his sigh deepens, “Fine.” Without further explanation, he disconnects, and turns to Belle, who stares, and the wolf too remains, just as curious (he makes a mental note to be particularly unpleasant when next he meets her without Belle, and hopefully she’d learn to tuck away that awful strain of inquisitiveness).

“What is it?” Belle asks, and the tone of her voice betrays that she has a feeling what next he’ll say. At least, he’ll be less a disappointment, for the fact she’s expecting it.

“Mother Superior,” he says, “the convent’s heater’s broken.”

At mention of the nuns—for all the town, with the exception of his Belle, knows how he feels about the nuns—Ruby turns on her heel, going to check on a table across the way (and it does not miss his eye, that it’s the cricket’s table).

She tilts her head in question, so Gold explains, “they’re my tenants—I’m their landlord.” He frowns, “so it appears to be my responsibility.”

“You have to go,” she says, eyes wide and serious. “It’s freezing out there.”

He nods, “M’afraid so, dearie.” Gold turns, raising a hand to call back Ruby, when Belle’s next words take him completely by surprise.

“This isn’t working.”

His hand drops slowly, as he turns back around, and Belle’s still speaking, but for the life of him, he can’t hear a word she says.

Of course it’s finally come to that. He’d always been aware that he’d been living on borrowed time. He’d always known eventually she’d realize her own worth, how much more she deserved.

Knowing that doesn’t make the blow any softer, however: he stares, mouth agape, at a total loss for words.

At his expression, Belle blushes and speaks quicker, “But if you’d rather not—yes, that was silly of me,” she says, flustered, “of course, you’re right, it’s late. We’ll try again some other time, not tonight—“

“Wha’s that?” he interrupts, blinking at her, because for just a moment, it had sounded like she’d said  _some other time_  as if she meant another date. As if she’d not just broken up with him, spurned his advances at long last.

“I said I could wait, take it To Go, back to my place, for after you’re finished, but you’re completely right. We’ll just plan for some other time—”

She means today, he realizes. She does not mean  _them_. She means  _today_.

“ _No_ ,” he says, and it’s nearer a growl than when he’d answered the phone. Regretting it, he reaches across the table, grasping her hand, “No, dear, that would be—that’d be  _grand_. I didn’t hear, before, love, but that sounds,” he pauses, looking for the proper term, he doesn’t want to

scare her and he feels that’s all he’s done this evening, “that sounds wonderful.”

* * *

The heating repairs take longer than expected, and it’s well after dark when he arrives back into downtown. It’s snowing in full force, as well.

When he arrives at the library, he sees that Dove only barely beat him. He’d called his man ahead of time, offering overtime pay to shovel Miss French’s sidewalk. He’d briefly considered doing it himself, with magic, but thought it wiser not to risk the cost, instead relying upon brute strength and the power of the almighty dollar, as it were.

The two men nod to each other, as Gold trudges through the quickly accumulating snow to the door. As he makes his way up the stairs, he hears the shovel scrape against pavement, the shrieking sound filling the air.

The sound of a crash from within the apartment immediately follows.

Gold hurries up the last of the stairs and raps intently on the door, “Belle?” He listens, considering whether or not to use his own key, when after some banging, the door opens to a teary librarian. “Dearie, what’s the matter? What’s happened?”

The poor girl opens her mouth, but a little wail escapes, and instead, she steps aside to reveal two To Go orders from Granny’s diner, dropped all over the linoleum of the kitchen floor.

“Oh, love,” he says, stepping into the apartment.

As she helps him out of his coat, hanging it on the rack beside the door, Belle explains, “There was a terrible sound outside. I got startled, and—“

She freezes again at another round of shrieks, and Gold realizes his mistake, “Ah, the shoveling.” She looks at him curiously, and without thought, he takes her hand, leading her to the window. He points below to where Dove labors away, “I took the liberty of asking Dove to clean the snow from your sidewalk, but I should have warned you beforehand. It was remiss of me.” After a pause, he adds, “I’m sorry.”

Belle squeezes his hand, “No, it was thoughtful of you,” She turns back to the kitchen sighing, “but now I ruined our date, _again_.”

“No permanent harm done,” he comforts, and with a wave of his hand, the mess vanishes, the magic to return her smile well worth any cost. “Not your fault, in the least.”

“Oh, thank you,” she tells him. With a final squeeze she drops his hand, returning to the kitchen. Opening a cupboard she pulls out a little cardboard box, “I’ve got hot chocolate.”

“Sounds good,” he says.

“You’ll make the fire?”

“My pleasure.”

* * *

In the end she falls asleep, tucked against him on the couch. Gold waits until the fire begins to burn low before he tries to wake her. “Belle,” he murmurs quietly into her hair. She makes a tired little sound, and snuggles a closer, holding round his middle tighter. “Belle,” he tries again, but this time, when she murmurs low and a touch on the argumentative side, he gives up.

Or perhaps, gives in, more accurately.

Gold gives in, because he realizes she’s right: this won’t work, not forever, and eventually she’ll realize just how truly right her words had been, even if she does not now. She’ll realize how much better she deserves, and completely wonderful she is, how wanting he is, and then he’ll lose her, but for the moment, she’s his.

So he gives in, despite the fact that he’s still hungry, the repairs at the convent having giving him quite the appetite, and his arm curled around her lies half asleep, as well as the lingering smell of spilt pickle juice and the steady complaint of his bad knee. He does not move a muscle, because Belle’s warm and in his lap, and he can still taste the hot chocolate from when they’d kissed rather chastely earlier, and her hair smells of clean flowers, and perhaps just a touch of his own cologne.

He does not move because he’s living on borrowed time, and he’ll damn well live every minute of it.

With another little bit of magic, he extinguishes the fire and shuts the flue, and because he can hardly help himself, he kisses the top of her head, before allowing himself to drift off.

When he awakens in the wee hours, the light just beginning to come in the windows, he rouses her gently, and she grumbles (into what can only be a spot of drool on his lapel) but acquiesces to being tucked into bed properly, day clothes and all, before he slips out with promises of next time.

He kisses the top of her head once more for good measure before leaving. 

 

 

 


End file.
